Abstract

Advances in computer graphics enable us to create digital images of astonishing complexity and realism. However, processing resources are still a limiting factor. Hence, many costly but desirable aspects of realism are often not accounted for, including global illumination, accurate depth of field and motion blur, spectral effects, etc. especially in real-time rendering.

On the other hand, there is a strong trend towards a larger number of pixels per display due to larger displays, higher pixel densities or larger fields of view. Also, more bits per pixel (high dynamic range, wider color gamut/fidelity), increasing refresh rates (better motion depiction), and an increasing number of displayed views per pixel (stereo, multi-view, all the way to holographic or lightfield displays) are observable trends in current display technology.

This development causes significant technical challenges due to aspects such as limited compute power and bandwidth which are yet unsolved.

Fortunately, the human visual system has certain limitations which suggest that providing the highest possible visual quality is not always necessary. In this report, we present the key research and models that exploit the limitations of perception to tackle visual quality and workload alike. Moreover, we present the open problems and promising future research targeting the question how we can minimize the effort to compute and display only the necessary pixels while still offering full visual experience to a user.